I just got back to New York (after a loooong absence) and I’ve been jonesing to get cooking.  So I headed to the most likely source for some quality staples.  The non-perishable items pictured here (each is price tagged) total $457.25.  Presuming these baked goods sell for $2.50 each at the fancy food store from which they hail, those presented here total $100 (though likely many sell for well over that price point).

So that’s $557.25 of goods wasted, then reclaimed in less than an hour.  Full breakdown after the jump.

My absence from you dear readers has been long and weighty, but not without its purpose!

I have been in far away lands, filming a documentary about the lives of LGBT Ugandans. We’ve returned from abroad and have hit the ground running in the edit room, and now our Kickstarter page is up and running alongside us!

Please CLICK HERE to help support the film, and the LGBT community’s fight for their rights.

Oops, I left for Uganda in a post-Halloween dash and neglected to share my terribly cute little ghosts with you.  We were in need of decoration for a Halloween party, and had recently come across 500 coffee filters in the trash.  So we crumpled them up one by one, tied them off with a few of the trillion feet of freegan yarn I have, then drew faces and strung them across the ceiling.  Such character!

Slice eggplant and squash, coat with olive oil and gifted fancy balsamic mustard, roast.

Discover flavor remains bland.  Carmelize onions.  Add garlic, vegetable stock, coriander, cumin, salt, and pepper.  Blend with roasted vegetables.  Add cream.  Lesson: when a concoction fails to charm, make it SOUP(er)!

Then while dinner cooked itself in the crock pot, I fished out what was left of the paint I had used for my walls, and did a quick (shoddy, but improved nonetheless) revamp of this grand trunk. As ever, it was a pleasure making strokes with the thick milkshakey scent-free zero-VOC paint. Our new trunk now houses winter boots and other unsightlies.

As previously stated, I have great affection for my hand-me-down crock pot.  What an invention!  I tossed in a bunch of the veggies from the other night along with a smorgasbord of Asian sauces (black bean, hoisin, soy, black pepper, ponzu, fish, spicy/sour, Sriracha) largely left over from the Singaporean girls I used to live with.  Turned on machine, let be for some hours.

I’m a picky apple eater.  I like them sweet tart crispy.  Freegan apples are often red delicious mealy–but perfect for cooking.  Jane cored the apples with our freegan apple corer, then down the hatch plunked some brown sugar, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, pecans, freegan raisins, a bit o butter, and for good luck: a marshmallow on top.

Mushrooms, parsley, lettuce, green beans, broccoli, corn, eggplant, red and yellow bell pepper, parsnips, carrots, yellow squash, apples, salad dressing, whole wheat bread, baguettes, cheesy enchilada Cheetos, Fritos.  Vegetables are par for the course, but what a treat to find stuff I’d never buy.  Every so often, I take one for the team and clog my arteries instead of our landfills.  Can’t wait to get my Frito cook on!

We combined freegan eggplant with an indulgent purchase of asparagus and roasted them with olive oil and and lemon.

I had a dozen nearly-expired limes that I had been meaning to use the last couple weeks.  So I decided to make key lime pie.  Except I only had mini pie tins that my old roommates had left behind, so I decided to make 5 mini pies rather than one large.  We had a half a bag of really old graham crackers left from a work party, but that wasn’t enough for all the crust, so I also used a handful of pretzel Ritz crackers that I had found in the trash.  I thought the salty pretzelness would be a nice balance with the sweet tart of the pie, but didn’t want it to be too savory so I also mixed in some fresh (also nearly too old) ginger and shredded coconut I found in the fridge.  I threw everything for the crust in the food processor along with a stick of butter, then patted it out inside the tins.  Then I made the filling and meringue more or less as dictated by the Joy of Cooking.  It turned out seriously delicious.  The crust was perfectly gooey and crumbly and sweet and salty.  And because I put in 1/4 c extra lime juice and zest (and an extra egg yolk to balance it out), the filling was nigh exploding with flavor–it mattered not that the lime juice had come from limes that, on account of their browning exterior, often would have been tossed.  And although I didn’t beat the eggs as much as suggested for the meringue because my beater ran out of batteries, the topping was just puffy enough for such little pies.

Then we all dined on the roof, on a found table, with found cutlery and wine glasses, old jam jar water glasses, a box of Black Box poured into an old wine bottle, a beautiful view, and with dessert, a game of Cranium.  Almost nothing matched or was even picked out or purchased, but the setting, the food, and the people were comfortable and wonderful and charming and that’s what makes an evening memorable.